You Have a Great Idea. Now What?
Call it the Day Two dilemma.
You have a brainstorm, wake up the next morning, and need to figure out whether the idea is actually worth pursuing -- or better left under the covers.
This is the murky time before investors, retail space or product packaging come into the picture -- a time to figure out where that big idea might actually fit, or not fit, in the marketplace. After all, there's no shortage of would-be visionaries out there: last year alone, there were 674,499 applicants for a new trademark or patent registration.
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While groups abound to help entrepreneurs find financing, pen a business plan or secure a patent, on Day Two it's mostly up to the individual to do some reconnaissance, and soul-searching.
"It's amazing to me how little common-sense research people do," says Mike Collins , chief executive of Big Idea Group Inc., which helps match inventors with companies that can market the idea.
What's necessary is everything from gauging the interest of real end-users (not just friends and family) and figuring out an initial price to checking out available Web domains and crystallizing personal goals.
Take Jeremiah Hutchins, who did a lot right when his idea for producing digital ID cards for children was nothing more than a gut instinct.
As a California truck driver, Mr. Hutchins had plenty of dream time on the road and admits to having multiple closets filled with brainstorms that never got off the ground. It was on a stretch of highway between Riverside, Calif., and Los Angeles, in August 2002, that inspiration struck again as he listened to radio reports about a missing girl in Southern California. "All the talk shows kept saying, 'If only they'd had better identification information about her....' "
Mr. Hutchins, along with a security guard for his trucking firm, already had been toying with producing business cards on mini-CDs, and the driver wondered: Would this work for kids' IDs? The next morning, he got in touch with a police investigator his wife knew in Barstow, Calif., who considered his idea from a user's standpoint and expressed a great deal of interest.
Figuring he was onto something, Mr. Hutchins hit the Internet and was relieved when his search under "child identification" didn't yield much in the way of competition. He asked the investigator for all the kinds of information the police would want for a missing-person report: a child's allergies, scars, birthmarks, blood type, habits like nail biting -- "things parents don't know in times of hysteria," Mr. Hutchins says -- and then set about figuring out how much information could be put on a mini-CD that parents could have ready if ever needed.
Early on, it's mostly up to the individual to do some reconnaissance
Mr. Hutchins also thought about how he would use the Internet. "I didn't want to build something until we had a good name with an available Web site." It took about three days of searching to find a catchy domain name (
www.safekidscard.com) that wasn't already registered. He and his partner also developed a rough prototype, testing CD burners, digital cameras, printers and even ink to see what wouldn't smudge in a washing machine.
Within a week and a half he had a mock ID, which he showed to his police contact. She shared it with her colleagues and, impressed, they in turn invited him to a local safety fair where he set up a computer system and sold 150 IDs that day for $20 a pop to parents, which helped him gauge his product's value in the marketplace. This was just three weeks after his initial brainstorm in the truck.
Today, Safe Kids Card Inc. has 44 U.S. franchises and three international operations selling the cards at about $13 each. Systemwide revenue was $360,000 in 2004, with a projected increase to $1 million in 2005. Meantime, Mr. Hutchins's experience points to some of the crucial first steps that experts advise would-be entrepreneurs to take before investing significant time and money.
Find Out If It's Really a Good Idea
"Ask more than your mother," says Mr. Collins of Big Idea Group, based in Manchester, N.H. Mr. Collins spends his days canvassing the country getting pitched by inventors. Those whose ideas he likes -- and there aren't many; "99 times out of 100 I say, 'No thank you' " -- he adds to his inventor network. Sometimes he'll pitch a person's idea to a bigger company for development, or the big companies come to him looking for talent; he gets fees from the companies and takes a cut of any licensing deals.
Mr. Collins likens the process to "American Idol," the TV show where would-be singers compete for a shot at the big time. "For every great singer," he says, "there are a hundred people who can't hold a note and think they can."
Getting a reality check means soliciting a wide swath of opinion from people already established in the industry. That was the approach Anne Maxfield took when she and a partner began developing Project Solvers Inc., a New York-based talent agency that places free-lance and full-time job seekers in the apparel industry, primarily in product development.
When they first started their service in 1989, Ms. Maxfield says that there weren't any agencies to represent free-lancers in the industry. She wondered: Did people even want a service like this? "We called everyone we knew who we thought could help and said, 'We have this idea,' " she says. "I was terribly nervous talking to them -- and was nervous about getting laughed out of the office."
Instead, she says, she was surprised at how interested people were in sharing information. For example, after she made a cold call to a temp agency in an unrelated field in Boston, an assistant there sent her samples of all the forms and contracts she would need to start the business.
Lots of times, would-be entrepreneurs don't want to reach out because they're scared someone will steal the idea. But business moves likes lightning, and such hesitancy can backfire, says Rich Sloan, co-founder of
www.StartupNation.com and co-host with his brother Jeff of a nationally syndicated radio show, both of which provide tools and advice for entrepreneurs.
"If you are on a mission, your first concern shouldn't be what someone takes away from you, but to be aggressive in refining it," Rich Sloan says.
Adds Ms. Maxfield: "We figured if someone hadn't already done it, they weren't going to just because we mentioned it." Today Project Solvers represents more than 2,000 workers and has placed roughly two million hours of free-lance work.
Equally important is to avoid becoming so enamored of the initial brainstorm that you forget the big picture. Davis Farmer is a former venture capitalist and now managing partner for Ulysses Group, in Exeter, N.H., which does consulting and advisory work for start-ups in the life-sciences field. He recalls once listening to an inventor who had created a way to speed up the signal from a computer keystroke to the computer's brain, which in turn would speed up how fast text appeared on the screen. The rub: Text already appears faster than one can blink.
"He'd created an elegant technical solution to a problem that didn't exist," Mr. Farmer says.
He adds that some of the best inventive minds often don't take into account who will be using the end product. During a recent event called Peak Pitch, entrants in this summer's upcoming New Hampshire Business Plan Competition got six minutes on a ski lift with investors and advisers where they could practice their pitches. Mr. Davis recalls listening to one Ph.D. make a case for a new diagnostic approach in women's health, and then asked the inventor whether he had spoken to doctors in the field about his idea. He hadn't -- and Mr. Davis advised him to do so immediately.
"If the person who is delivering the care to the patient doesn't value the technology, it won't get into the marketplace," Mr. Davis says. "One of the issues with academics is that there is a whole dimension to the things they are doing that doesn't occur to them." For the inventor riding the ski lift with him, "the notion of treating the people he's trying to help, that is very abstract."
Know Why You Want to Pursue the Idea
Is it money or a lifestyle change you're seeking? And are you really an entrepreneur, or are you an inventor? "Let's say you have really wonderful recipes for various kinds of bread," says Rich Sloan of StartupNation.com, and "you are considering opening a bakery. But would you be better suited to being a distributor of breads to restaurants than to running a retail store?"
Mr. Collins of Big Idea Group echoes that notion. Being an inventor is about having a great idea for a product or service, he says, while being an entrepreneur is about building an organization. Within his own database of 8,000 inventors, he says, there are 10 times as many people who would do better licensing an idea to another company as there are those who would do well building their own organization as entrepreneurs.
Moreover, he suggests that you really try to determine whether the motivation for pursuing an idea is money or a lifestyle change, and focus any idea toward your desired end.
Jennifer Appel was only a hobby baker while she worked as a clinical psychologist from 1991 to 1996. The psychology work was "emotionally draining," she says, recalling how she'd come home and whip up muffins and cookies as a way to de-stress. It was in 1993, while at home on summer break editing her dissertation, that she began watching the proliferating TV cooking shows -- and started to think about turning her hobby into a profession.
"I had friends in the food business, and I always thought they had a clear beginning, middle and end to their day," says Ms. Appel, who went on to open New York City's Magnolia Bakery with a partner and later her own store, Buttercup Bake Shop, which she is now in the process of franchising. Had she been happier in her other profession, she might have considered just selling her recipes to someone else and letting them pursue a full-time business. But ultimately, it was a different way of life she craved most.
Says Rich Sloan: "Each of these decisions is a huge fork in the road that determines how an idea comes to life, and what it does for your life."
Figure Out If Anyone Else Has Already Done It
Identifying your competition, or lack of it, as Mr. Hutchins did with Safe Kids Card, is also high on the list in the early days of fleshing out a brainstorm. Warns Mr. Collins of Big Idea Group: "It's human nature that you don't want to hear the bad news that someone else has come up with your idea, so you don't look."
In terms of cost, this type of research is easier than ever to do. The Internet allows entrepreneurs to investigate the market at a sliver of the cost and time of hiring a market-research firm. Jeff Sloan of StartupNation.com suggests sitting down and typing every possible wording incarnation of your idea into various search engines before moving forward. "It's a great enabler," he says of the Web.
Additionally, he suggests that anyone with an idea for a product do the legwork of visiting retail stores and taking notes on any type of similar item you see. "If you are thinking about producing a unique type of yo-yo," he says, "then go to the toy department in Wal-Mart and Kmart and investigate everything on the shelves." He also suggests seeking the help of a patent lawyer as soon as possible to investigate intellectual-property issues.
And while it's probably too soon to develop a full-fledged business plan, Mr. Davis of Ulysses Group advises people to get an outline of how one should be done and use it for guidance in figuring out the competitive landscape. "It forces people wringing through it to think through the key elements to their business."
What are the Potential Pitfalls?
Knowing what you might charge for a good or service is important early on because it's difficult to solicit meaningful consumer opinion without a price tag. "To say to someone that a supersonic jet across the Atlantic is a good idea because it gets there in four hours is one thing," says Rich Sloan. "But if you know the price tag and everything that goes into it, you end up with a discontinued Concorde."
Arriving at a price isn't always as hard as it sounds. When Ms. Appel was considering turning her baking into a business, she contacted food distributors to learn what a pound of butter and 10-pound bag of flour cost. From there she took her own recipes and started to do the math -- what would it cost to make a dozen mini-cheesecakes or a dozen cookies? -- and put together a mock menu with mock pricing.
In the early days, before taking the retail route, she and her partner began cold-calling existing cafes and restaurants with samples of their baked goods and subsequently learned what the market might pay for their work.
"We were priced too high for certain establishments," Ms. Appel says. "But most people were pretty receptive."
An idea can be great but go nowhere if there isn't a way to bring it to market initially. For instance, around the time of Y2K, Abe Halberstam learned that New York City was looking for ideas about how to manage food delivery to hospitals and prisons if computer networks went down. That got Mr. Halberstam, who was already in the kosher food-service business, thinking about whether he could produce shelf-stable, self-heating kosher meals.
Without much trouble, Mr. Halberstam was able to find makers of heat systems that allow consumers to self-heat their meals in a box without electricity. The heater is a pad made of magnesium and iron that produces heat and steam when saltwater from an enclosed packet is poured onto it.
But locating a food producer that would dedicate part of a plant to kosher shelf-stable foods, which require no cross-contamination with other food, was another matter. At the time, Mr. Halberstam couldn't promise a high volume of business, "so for someone to take a major plant and convert it to kosher was basically impossible," he says.
Still, he didn't give up. He called anyone who made any type of prepackaged meal from the East Coast to the West Coast and asked for information about shelf-stable food production. He followed every lead he got. "They'd say, 'I can't help you, call Mr. Jones.' And so I'd call Mr. Jones and he would say, 'Call Mr. Weiss.' " Eventually, a call led to Rutgers University in New Jersey, which had its own research center for shelf-stabilization, and they helped him get a start.
"You get us the machine to package the food," Mr. Halberstam says the center told him, "we'll give you the production space." And he was in business.
He used a Rutgers facility to make his meals for nearly a year before he was producing high enough volumes to secure space at a major food manufacturer. Today his Labriute Meals are sold for $6.99 to $7.99 across the country in major grocery stores and other food outlets.
Says Mr. Halberstam of his early legwork: "You've got to be persistent and figure a way to make it work and not just say, 'OK, sorry, goodbye.'"
好点子也需勤推敲
这或许可形象地称之为“第二天难题”。
头脑风暴后的第二天早上醒来，你必须确定新点子是值得一试，还是最好弃之不用。
在涉及投资者、店面或产品包装等诸多因素前，你首先要在重重迷雾中看清这个了不起的点子是否真的会有市场。毕竟，美国并不缺乏各种各样的创业点子：仅去年一年就受理了674,499宗商标和专利注册申请。
与在融资、商业计划起草或专利申请阶段可以有太多的机构寻求帮助不同，“第二天难题”这个阶段基本只能依靠创业者自己去进行考察或思索。
“我很惊讶地发现人们很少从常理角度对新点子进行推敲，”Big Idea Group Inc.的首席执行长麦克?柯林斯(Mike Collins)表示。Big Idea专门帮助发明者寻找能实现其新点子的公司。
要考虑的因素很多，包括终端消费者（而不仅仅是朋友或家人）是否真的感兴趣，如何估计初期定价，查找可申请的网络域名，再到明确个人目标等等。
以杰里米阿?哈钦斯(Jeremiah Hutchins)为例，目前他正为“生产儿童数码身份识别卡”的创业点子忙活著。
作为加州的一位卡车司机，哈钦斯在路上有太多的时间可用来遐想，不过他也承认有很多点子都只能束之高阁。2002年8月，当他驱车行驶在加州Riverside和洛杉矶之间的公路上时，收音机里播放的一则“南加州一个女孩失踪”的消息忽然给了他一个灵感。“整个谈话节目都在不断地说，假如他们有这个女孩的身份识别信息就好了......”。
早就动过生产迷你CD名片念头的哈钦斯，立刻开始考虑生产儿童身份识别卡是否可行？第二天一早，他联系了妻子认识的一位加州Barstow警探，这位警探从用户的角度考虑了他的想法后，表示了极大的兴趣。
感觉自己可能撞上了金矿的哈钦斯兴奋而又不安地在互联网上进行了“儿童身份识别”的关键词搜索，结果没有发现多少竞争对手，不由地大松了一口气。接下来，他向那位警探了解了警方在登记失踪人员报告时需要获取的所有信息：孩子的过敏症、体表疤痕、胎记、血型以及是否有喜欢啃指甲等习惯──“总而言之，是父母们在伤心欲绝的状态下可能想不起来的所有细节”。然后，他开始考虑一个迷你CD上可以存放多少这种信息，以便在需要的情况下父母可以出具这种CD。
哈钦斯还考虑了互联网应用问题，“我希望在获得一个出色的域名后再著手做这件事。”他花了三天的时间进行搜索，最后找到了一个尚未注册的、响亮的域名
www.safekidscard.com。
一周半后，他制作了一个样品身份识别卡，交到了那位警探手中。警探和同事们看后非常惊讶，他们邀请哈钦斯参加当地一个安全设备交易会，在那里哈钦斯架起了一个电脑系统，以20美元的单价出售了150个身份识别卡，这为其评估产品的市场价值提供了帮助。这时距离他在卡车中的灵光闪现才过去了三周。
如今，Safe Kids Card Inc.在美国地区已有了44家特许授权，在全球有三处生产业务，产品售价13美元左右。2004年，整个系统的收入达到了36万美元，预计今年将增至100万美元。从哈钦斯的经验中，我们可以清楚地看到创业者在投入大量时间和金钱之前必须经过的一些重要步骤。
确定究竟是不是好点子
“多问问其他人，”新罕布什尔州Big Idea Group的柯林斯表示。柯林斯常常在美国各地听取发明者的想法，如果他觉得这个想法不错，就会纳入其网络中，但这种时候并不多，“100次中有99次我都只能说，不，谢谢你。”有时，柯林斯会向一家企业推荐这些创意或是向招募人才的公司推荐这些发明者；他向客户公司收费，并从许可交易中抽取佣金。
结合实际考察意味著要从业内人士中广泛听取意见。纽约就业服务公司Project Solvers Inc.的创始人安?马克斯菲尔德(Anne Maxfield)及其合伙人在创业的最初阶段就采用了这样的办法。
Project Solvers专为服装产品开发领域的自由职业者和全职求职者提供服务。1989年刚刚开始提供这项服务时，马克斯菲尔德称，业内还没有专门为自由职业者提供服务的机构。她怀疑人们是否真的需要这种服务。“我们给每个我们认为能提供有益建议的人打电话，说我们有这个想法，”她说，“在和他们谈话时我很紧张，担心会在嘲弄声中被赶出办公室。”
但事实上，她惊讶地发现许多人对于分享信息有极大的兴趣。例如，有一次她没有预约就给波士顿一家非相关领域的临时工就业服务公司打了电话，那里的一位助理给她发来了她开立这家公司所需的所有表格和合同样本。
很多情况下创业者不愿迈出这一步，是因为他们担心好点子可能会被别人窃取。但商情瞬息万变，这样的犹疑不决可能只会适得其反，瑞奇?斯隆(Rich Sloan)表示。瑞奇?斯隆是
www.StartupNation.com的联合创始人，并与兄弟杰夫?斯隆(Jeff Sloan)共同主持著一档广播节目，这个网站和广播节目的宗旨都是为创业者提供一些工具和建议。
“如果你有一项事业要做，你首先要考虑的不是别人会从你这里偷走什么，而是如何尽力地改良这个想法，”瑞奇?斯隆表示。
马克斯菲尔德则表示，“我们觉得如果以前没人做这件事，他们也不会因为我们提到了就去做。”如今，Project Solvers代表著2,000多名员工，并已安排了大约200万个小时的临时工作。
同样重要的是不要过度沉湎于最初的念头，而忘了全景。戴维斯?法默(Davis Farmer)以前是一个风险投资家，目前在新罕布什尔州的Ulysses Group担任执行合伙人，Ulysses Group为生命科学领域的初创企业提供咨询顾问服务。法默记得曾遇到这样一位发明者，他发明的技术加快了电脑键盘信号传递至电脑处理器的速度，进而提高文字显示在屏幕上的速度。但遗憾的是文字显示在屏幕上的速度早已够快了，鉴于人眼的反应速度，提高文字显示速度早已没有实际意义。
“他为一个根本不存在的技术问题提出了一套完美的解决方案，”法默表示。
此外，法默称，一些聪明的发明创意往往根本不考虑谁会使用最终产品。在最近的一个活动Peak Pitch中，今夏New Hampshire Business Plan Competition的方案入选者获得了与投资者和创业顾问同乘滑雪缆车6分钟的机会，藉此练习推广他们的创意。法默记得有一位博士展示了一种女性健康新的诊断方法，他问这位发明者是否曾和这个领域的医生讨论过他的想法。这位博士称没有，法默建议他应立即这样做。
“如果这个领域的医生认为这项技术没有什么价值，这项技术就不会有市场，”法默表示，“学术界存在的一个问题是他们所作的广泛研究有些对我们来说并不是问题。”对于那次同乘滑雪缆车的许多人来说，“如何和他试图帮助的人打交道，似乎是一个非常抽象的概念。”
清楚你在这个过程中要追寻什么？
你寻求的是财富亦或生活方式的改变？你是适合创业，还是做发明家？StartupNation.com的瑞奇?斯隆称，让我们假设你的确拥有很棒的各种面包配方，目前正在考虑开设一家面包房。但你会不会更合适做一个向餐馆配送面包的供应商，而不是经营一家零售店？
Big Idea Group的柯林斯同意这种说法。他说，对于一个发明者来说重要的是有产品或服务的伟大创意，但作为创业者，他们要做的是构建一个组织。柯林斯称，在其8,000个发明者的数据库中，每11个人中只有1人能真正做好创业这件事，其他10个人最好还是将点子授权给其他公司做。
此外，他建议希望创业的人士要明确一件事，即在这个过程中是要追求财富，还是生活方式的改变，然后基于这个目标去努力。
1991年至1996年，詹妮弗?阿佩尔(Jennifer Appel)在一家诊所做心理医生，烘焙是她的一项爱好。阿佩尔说，做心理医生“精神上很累”，她把回到家做做松糕和饼乾作为消除压力的一种方式。1993年夏季休假时她忙著撰写自己的论文，这时她开始看各种各样的电视厨艺节目，并开始考虑是否要将自己的爱好转变为一项职业。
阿佩尔说：“我在食品行业有许多朋友，我总觉得他们每天的生活都非常简单。”于是，她和一个合伙人在纽约市开了一家Magnolia Bakery，后来又有了自己的店Buttercup Bake Shop，现在她正在忙著Buttercup Bake Shop的品牌许可业务。假如当初她在心理医生行业中稍微开心一些，她或许只会考虑将自己的配方卖给什么人，让别人去发展成为一个企业。但最终，追求改变生活方式的念头还是让她毅然做出了抉择。
瑞奇?斯隆称，“这些抉择每个都是人生道路上的一个巨大分叉，决定著一个点子如何实现以及它给你的生活带来什么。”
了解其他人是否抢先一步
在将头脑风暴获得的点子具体化的最初阶段，明确竞争环境非常重要，就像哈钦斯当初为Safe Kids Card所作的竞争调查一样。Big Idea Group的柯林斯提醒称，“你肯定不愿意听到其他人早就先行一步了，这是很自然的，因此你根本不愿意去调查。”
从成本角度来说，现在此类调查很容易进行。互联网使得创业者无需雇佣市场调研公司，而且只需付出微乎其微的成本和时间即可。StartupNation.com的杰夫?斯隆建议创业者不妨坐下来，将创业点子以任何可能的描述方式输入电脑，尝试不同的搜索引擎，然后再决定是否要继续下去，网络简直“太有用了”。
此外，杰夫?斯隆建议拥有新产品创意的人士花点时间去零售店走走，并记录下看到的类似商品。“如果你考虑生产一种独一无二的溜溜球，”他说，“那么不妨去沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)、Kmart这些玩具百货商店看看，对货架上的所有商品进行一番调查。”他还建议创业人士尽快寻求专利律师的帮助，对知识产权问题展开调查。
虽然制定一个全面的商业计划可能仍为时过早，Ulysses Group的法默建议人们列出一个必做之事的清单，参考这个清单判断竞争环境。“这迫使人们深入考虑对企业来说至关重要的因素。”
什么地方可能出错？
知道你的产品或服务能收费几何是早期阶段需要确定的重要因素，因为如果没有价格，就很难获得有意义的消费者意见。“和一个人说，跨越大西洋的超音速喷气式飞机是不错的创意，因为能在4小时内跨越大西洋是一件好事，”瑞奇?斯隆表示，“但由于价格以及其他种种因素，协和式飞机(Concorde)最终是个商业败笔。”
确定价格并没有听上去那么困难。当阿佩尔考虑基于自己的烘焙技艺开一家面包房的时候，她和多家食品经销商进行了联络，了解了一磅奶油和10磅一包的面粉进价。在此基础上，她拿出了自己的配方开始计算，生产一打迷你奶酪蛋糕或饼乾成本是多少，然后得到了一个标有模拟价格的模拟菜单。
在最初的日子里，阿佩尔没有直接走零售路线，她和她的合伙人开始给现有的咖啡厅和餐馆打电话，并给他们送去了样品，通过这种方式逐步地了解到可能获得的市场售价。
“在某些地方我们的定价太高了，”阿佩尔表示，“但大多数人的接受程度很好。”
如果在最初阶段没有正确地推向市场的方法，一个好点子也会失败。2000年左右的时候，阿贝?哈伯斯塔姆(Abe Halberstam)了解到纽约市正在征集点子：如果电脑网络瘫痪，如何管理医院和监狱的食品派送。这让早就在犹太教食品服务行业工作的哈伯斯塔姆想到了是否能生产可在常温状态下保存的、自热型犹太教盒饭。
很快，哈伯斯塔姆就找到了加热器生产商；使用这种加热器，消费者可以在一个不插电的盒子里加热盒饭。当盐水注入时，这种磁铁垫加热器就能产生热量和蒸汽。
但要敲定一家食品生产商愿意将部分生产设施用来生产这种自热型犹太教食品，是另外一个问题；所谓的犹太教食品，就要求生产过程不能和其他食品混合。但当时，哈伯斯塔姆还不能确保高订量，因此要让人们将一家大厂转变成专门生产犹太教食品基本上就是不可能。
但他没有放弃。他给从东海岸到西海岸生产预制盒饭的所有生产商都打了电话，询问可在常温状态下保存的食品的生产信息。他不放过任何一个线索，“他们说，我帮不了你，给琼斯(Jones)先生打电话吧。”然后，我就给琼斯先生打电话，琼斯先生会说，“找魏斯(Weiss)先生吧。”最后，一个电话打到了新泽西州的格斯大学(Rutgers University0，这个大学有一个自己的常温状态保存食品的研究中心，他们帮助哈伯斯塔姆开始了他的创业。
“你提供包装食品的机器，”哈伯斯塔姆称，当时中心就是这么告诉他的，“我们为你提供生产场所。”他的创业就这样开始了。
哈伯斯塔姆在格斯大学的一处房子里开始生产食品，近一年后他的订单才达到足够高的水平，帮助其说服了一家大型食品生产商。如今，他的Labriute Meals在全美各大超市和食品商店中的售价从6.99美元至7.99美元不等。
哈伯斯塔姆在谈到自己初期的辛勤奔波时说，“你必须要坚持不懈，找到一个可行的办法，而不只是说，好吧，打扰了，再见。”
